Title

Mood Food

Broad Question

How does mood affect what you eat?

Specific Question

How does mood affect snack choices sweet or salty?

Hypothesis

It is hypothesized that the subjects that have a higher mood rating therefore a better mood will choose the sweet snack and the subjects with the lower mood rating therefore a worse mood will choose the salty snack.

Rationale: According to a recent study at Cornell University people who have just watched a sad movie and are upset chose the salty, unhealthy, buttery popcorn. The people who watched the funnier movie tended to chose the seedless grapes instead. So the people who were sad chose the salty snack. This finding pertains to my experiment because it was asking a very similar question.

Graph of Hypothesis

Hypothesis Graph

Variables

Independent Variable: mood of the subject

Dependent Variable: snack choice

Variables That Need To Be Controlled:

person who gave the speech to the class, speech to the class,person who gave mood survey, mood survey, snack options, amount of food in each snack, where the snacks were, how many snacks were there to choose, number of different snack option,room,

Vocabulary List That Needs Explanation

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General Plan

Potential Problems And Solutions

Not being in the room and missing the subjects as they go on a field trip. The solution is marking their data as affected.

Safety Or Environmental Concerns

allergies,choking, dispersion,food poisoning,mess,stabbed by pencil, paper cut, brake bracket on braces,

Experimental Design

An experiment was conducted to see if the mood of an individual affects their choice of sweet or salty food. The first thing that was done was the experimenter conducted a survey of different sweet and salty snacks. The subjects chose their favorite in each category. The experimenter proceeded to buy the most popular snacks. After that he set them up in the science room. He conducted another survey asking what the mood of each subject was. Then the experimenter asked each subject in the class which snack they wanted sweet or salty. The experimenter tried to make the mood survey and the snacks look un-related.

Resources and Budget Table

Item	Number needed	Where I will get this	Cost
	60 Earthchoice plastic containers	3.9 grams each clear with a brown ribbon used for holding the doritos and the starbursts taken from the school cafeteria
	2 bags Nacho Cheese Doritos	326 grams, red, bought at Grants Shop and Save, $4.29 each
	2 bags of Starburst fruit chews	204.1 grams bags,2 placed in each cup, flavors: bubble gum, lemon, cherry, orange approximately $4.00
	Flip video camera	JBES, for videos
	Tripod	JBES, for holding flip
	Ipad	JBES, taking pictures of experiment
	mood questionnaire	70 paper sheets with number line on it
	62 student subjects	JBES, 7th & 8th graders

Detailed Procedure

Procedure

1. Make a snack food __survey__ of which snack food the subject likes the best in the sweet and salty category.
2. Have Mr. Yahna give survey out to each class.
3. Have each student in the class click on the one in each category they like the best.


4. Count the results and record them on a spreadsheet.
5. Buy two bags of each most top salty and top sweet vote getter
6. Figure out a mass of how much is going to be in each cup cake holder as a snack serving.
7. Fill 16 cupcake holders with 9.8 grams of sweet (starburst) snack.
8. Fill 16 cupcake holders with 9.8 grams of salty (doritos) snack
9. The day of the experiment Mr. Yahna will give students coming into the class mood survey paper.
10. Mr.Yahna will read script to class
11 students will fill out survey, hand in survey and return to seats
12. Results will be given to the experimenter secretly and be recorded in a spreadsheet.
13. Come into the science room get everyones attention.
14. Explain the two choices and what the subjects will be doing.
14. Have the kids come up one by one and I will take the mood spreadsheet and record what snack below what mood.
15. Collect all of the results for which student and mood rating selected which snack.

Diagram

Photo List

picture of Starburst bag
picture of Doritos bag
picture of survey
picture of subject choosing sweet snack
picture of subject choosing salty snack

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Data Table

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Data Analysis

All Raw Data

Graphs

Data graph with affected data

Photos

Nacho Cheese Doritos Used In Expiment

Survey Used in Experiment

Starburst Fruit Chews Used in Experiment

Subject choosing sweet snack

Subject choosing the salty snack

Results

The average person’s mood that chose the salty snack is 2.23. The average person’s mood that chose the sweet snack is 4.34. Of people who chose mood ratings of 1-3, 2 people chose salty and 2 people chose sweet. Of the people who chose the mood ratings of 4-7 16 people chose salty and 15 chose sweet. Of the people who chose the mood ratings of 8-10 5 chose salty and 7 chose sweet.

Conclusion

There was an experiment designed to test if mood rating affected the snack choice of a student. The results show that people who chose sweet had a higher average mood rating than those who chose salty. The average mood rating of the people who chose sweet was 4.34 and the average mood rating of the people who had the salty snack was 2.33.

Discussion

The experiment did not clearly answer the question, does mood affect snack choice for sweet or salty. There were too many uncontrollable variables to clear trend in the data. Any further experimentation would need to test many more subjects and have better control of the variables to find a visible pattern. It was hypothesized that people who had a better mood would choose the sweet snack and those with a worse mood would choose the salty snack. The results loosely support the hypothesis and the answer to the question. The answer of the experiment question was that subjects who were happier chose the sweet snack and people who were less happy chose the salty snack. That conclusion was only reached after reviewing the mean data. There was no clear trend from the scatter graph. The results show that the average mood rating for someone who chose the sweet snack is 4.34 and average mood rating for the salty snack was 2.23.

There was a weak connection between the independent variable and the dependent variable. The graph is random with no trends, but weak trends in the raw data can be found. These results happend because if the subject is sad food that is comforting can improve mood. If the subject is happy the human body tends to want sweeter foods.The biggest problem that was faced during the experiment was controlling the variables. The experimenter could not control how many people chose each rating, or subject interpretation of the ratings. One person could think six was a good mood rating for them, but others who feel the same way may put a four. Another flaw in the experiment was timing. Some blocks chose their snack immediately after the survey (as intended). While one block chose their snack after about a half an hour. Although this experiment seemed to be flawed, research supports this experiment’s findings. A study at Cornell University was conducted with a greater number of trials and stricter controls. The results are similar, in this test salty was chosen by more upset people and people who were happy chose the sweet snack.

The experiment conducted did not require much technology. I did need a flip video camera and an ipad for pictures and videos. I used programs online to upload these pictures. The experiment might be a very important part of the future. It might be used to further prevent obesity. If it is known that someone who is happy would tend to want something more sweet give could give them fruit or other sweet healthy foods. If it is known that someone is sad give could give them healthier salty food options. One question that was thought of during the experiment was does the age of the subject matter. Also would the amount of trails lead to further patterns. I feel as though doing the science fair is a great opportunity for us to be exposed to true science.

Background Research

People feeling sad tend to eat more of less-healthy comfort foods than when they feel happy

sad people eaten 36 percent more popcorn than the sweet grapes

Wansink suspects that happy people want to maintain or extend their moods in the short term, but consider the long term and so turn to comfort food with more nutritional value. People feeling sad or depressed, however, just want to "jolt themselves out of the dumps" with a quick indulgent snack that tastes good and gives them an immediate "bump of euphoria."

sad people with no nutritional information ate twice as much popcorn as those feeling happy. In the groups that reviewed nutritional labels, however, the happy people ate about the same amount, but the sad people dramatically curbed their consumption, eating even less popcorn than the happy people.

References

Bildner, Cheryl. Personal interview. 20 Jan. 2013.

Lang, Susan. "How mood affects food choice." Cornell Chronicle Online. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2013. <http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/jan0

Abstract

There was an experiment conducted to see if mood affects snack choice sweet or salty. It was hypothesized that subjects that were happier would chose the sweet snack and the people who were less happy chose the salty snack. The subjects moods were rated and then they were given a snack of their choice. The results show that people who chose the sweet snack had a higher mood rating then the subjects who chose the salty snack. The average mood for the sweet subjects was 4.3 and the average for the salty subjects was 2.2. This supported the hypothesis.